Lone White Cell
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: He went mad in that cage with no sky. Future-fic, canon-compliant to chapter 565. Complete. Warnings for implied violence and some language.


Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Notes: Takes place in a nebulous post-final-arc setting in which most of the remaining hatchets have been buried and (almost) everybody lives.

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><p>Lone White Cell<p>

Ishida Uryuu tapped his fingers on the table, starkly aware of his circumstances. His room was comfortable enough, with a futon, a small desk and even a small television. He hadn't known that there were televisions in Seireitei, at least not for the general public, and strongly suspected that it was only there to make a point.

"The point" was that all of Seireitei knew his appearance and most of his abilities (and present lack thereof). Furthermore, the main if not only reason he hadn't yet been accidentally skewered on the end of a zanpaku-tou was Kurosaki, and that was a whole new can of worms that Uryuu was not yet ready to open. In any case, attempting escape while greatly handicapped and under heavy scrutiny would not only be pointless, it would be monumentally stupid.

Three years ago, Uryuu would have vehemently denied any kind of culpability for his actions.

Two years ago, he would have admitted that perhaps he occasionally allowed his emotions to run away with him, but it made him no less effective.

Now, Uryuu would willingly if not happily admit that he had been ten kinds of a thick-headed idiot for signing on with an ancient organization that he knew absolutely _nothing_ about save that it was comprised of Quincies. Finding out that the highest levels of Quincy power were attained by effectively selling one's soul to a spiritual parasite with delusions of godhood had been… enlightening, in the sense that getting a blinding light in one's eyes while the nice doctor is explaining just how you wound up hospitalized with a severe head injury is "enlightening".

Kurosaki would have yelled and attempted to slap him upside the head for being a short-sighted idiot. Kuchiki-san would doubtless have kicked him in the face and made absolutely certain he knew why she was doing so. Sado-san would have said nothing in his oddly eloquent way, chewing him out royally without moving a muscle.

And Inoue-san would have looked at him, eyes wide and wet, and torn his heart open.

Not that he needed the help.

Someone knocked on the door.

Uryuu looked at his wrist out of habit, but he wasn't allowed any time-keeping devices. He'd been fed dinner half an hour ago, so unless the captain of Second Division had made yet another attempt to disorient and weaken him by putting him on an irregular schedule, it should be about 18:30.

Few of his visitors bothered to knock, so – "Come in!"

The moment the door slid open, a heavy reiatsu poured in from the hallway. For a moment, all the lights in the room seemed to flare and dim.

Uryu clenched his hands around his teacup and nodded in greeting. "Kurosaki."

He grinned and waved. "Hey, Ishida."

_Grinned_, casually and honestly. That looked so strange on Kurosaki. "I see you still have all the reiryoku control of a toddler."

And there was the familiar scowl. "Stifle it, Ishida. I'm suppressing it as far as I can."

And wasn't that a scary thought?

Uryuu would never stop needling Kurosaki about how utterly useless he'd been at controlling his spiritual pressure before… well, _before_, but he had improved vastly. Still, even when he was consciously suppressing it, Kurosaki's spiritual pressure spilled everywhere, not quite able to be contained in a human (or at least humanoid) spiritual body. Most people couldn't kill literally godlike beings, plural, with just a pair of oversized meat cleavers.

Or at all. Kurosaki was insane.

Suddenly, Ishida realized someone was touching him and reacted with the paranoia appropriate to anyone who has survived more than ten consecutive seconds among the Vandenreich. With his cross confiscated (and if there was any merciful God, not in the hands of that monster Kurotsuchi) and his spiritual power sealed, he resorted to the kind of cheap trick better suited to an action movie or a fighting manga.

He pulled back and punched Kurosaki in the face. Due to the power differential, it worked out precisely as expected.

Kurosaki sat, smirking.

Ishida did not blush in embarrassment.

Kurosaki frowned in concern. "You okay there, Ishida? Should I get some ice for your hand?"

"No thank you. I am perfectly fine."

Kurosaki gave him a look which communicated exactly how much he believed that. "Yeah, sure. You were spacing out again, by the way."

_And whose fault is that?_ Uryu griped in the privacy of his own mind. He did not need to say it aloud, first because he had already repeated that question until it lost all meaning, and second because the ultimate blame for this whole unbelievable millennium-long mess lay squarely on Juhabach. As the Sleeping King of the Quincies no longer existed, the point was moot.

Uryuu shuddered. He could have feared Kurosaki for that if nothing else, very easily. He would have asked himself why not, but he didn't want to know the answer just yet. His worldview had been shaken and warped quite enough in the past few years.

"Kurosaki, if you keep poking me, I will ask Yamada-san to inform Ise-san of the identity of the genius who introduced Kusajishi to energy drinks."

Kurosaki pulled his arm back in a hurry. There was scary, and then there was _scary_. "You still hit worse than a little girl."

Uryuu quirked an eyebrow. "Considering the little girls who have hit you count Arisawa, Kusajishi and possibly Nel-san among their number…"

Kurosaki winced. "That's not much of an insult coming from me, then."

"No."

Uryuu had missed this inane banter.

Kurosaki shrugged. "Oh, Ishida, that reminds me. I thought of something yesterday when Ganju was hanging around mooching off Hanatarou like usual."

"Before or after Kotetsu-san chased him around Seireitei with a stick and Kuukaku-san set him on fire?"

Kurosaki looked at Uryuu for a long moment. "Okay, how the hell did your hear about that from inside a jail cell?"

"I have my ways."

"Hanatarou told you?"

Uryuu nodded. "He is pleasant enough company."

Kurosaki rolled his eyes. "'Pleasant enough company', and here I thought that stick couldn't get any farther up your-"

"Shut up."

Kurosaki snickered.

"Why are you bothering me?" And had he actually just said that? Now he sounded like a discontented sixth-grader.

"Well, anyway, I realized something, or more like remembered it. You know how it turned out that my mom and your father were cousins?"

Uryuu gave Kurosaki a flat look.

"Duh. So, you know my old man's a Shiba?"

Another flat look.

"Well, it turns out Ganju and I are cousins on Oyaji's side. And _we're_ cousins…"

Uryuu sat there in silence while his brain rebooted.

Kurosaki's eyes wandered around the bare room, clearly bored.

"I'm related to that _harpy?_"

"Yep."

"…Are you sure I'm not allowed alcohol?"

Kurosaki nodded commiseratingly. "Sorry. Prisoners don't get drinks."

Uryuu shoved his cold tea out of the way and let his head hit the desk. There was really only one possible response to that. "Crap."

"Well, she did testify at your trial. At least now we know why."

"Trial?"

"Okay, it was bullshit, but a real one would have gotten you executed for sure the way the government works around here."

Uryuu conceded the point. Whether or not he deserved to live, in any sense of the word, was unimportant compared to the unstoppable insanity that was Kurosaki Ichigo. One newly-recruited enemy soldier, no matter how highly-placed in the hierarchy, had been deemed not worth the risk of Kurosaki starting yet another war so close on the heels of the last. Especially not after one took into account how he had earned the literally undying loyalty of half of the remnants of Gotei 13, not to mention the odd militia that had sprung up in an effort to keep order in at least parts of Rukongai.

At least, that was the official story. For now it was necessary for the higher ranks on both sides to stick to the polite fiction that Kurosaki did not have a private army in all but name. Of course, Kurosaki himself was the only one who believed it. Even Inoue-san had seen through it.

"How are the others doing?"

Ichigo shot him a "I'm not even going to bother calling your bullshit" look. "Mostly fine. Renji's strutting around because he's finally mastered his Bankai, and pretty much in record time. Byakuya's still got a stick up his ass, and he's still stuck in Fourth. That one girl, Aizen's old fukutaicho, managed to get messed up _again_ and no one's told me how."

That was doubtless because Kurosaki would stick his neck out for a near-stranger without a second thought once he got an idea into his head, and no one needed him to go haring off on a poorly-thought-out personal mission now.

"Rukia's mood-swinging between blaming herself for her brother getting hurt, because _of course_ she could take an enemy that one-shotted a captain, and pulling her hair out because she's stuck doing almost all of the paperwork for two divisions now that Jyuushirou's in a coma and Mayuri is MIA."

"Wait, Kurotsuchi is missing?"

"Yeah."

Was it too much to hope that he was killed in action and not merely missing? Preferably slowly and painfully?

"…Uryuu, that smile is fucking creepy, and I've fought Kenpachi _and Aizen_."

"I don't care." Uryuu made an effort to calm down, at least enough to recover his usual neutral expression. "So, the others? Preferably someone I actually care about?"

"So you weren't worried about Rukia and Renji?"

"Kuchiki-san, perhaps. Abarai? Please."

"Uh-huh. Well, Chad's doing okay for the most part. Still adjusting to the prosthesis. The weirdest part is that his Braze Derecho de whatever, that Left Arm of the Devil thing he's got for his Fullbring? It still works just fine."

"Not really. It's likely an Urahara creation. Where else could he have gotten a realistic prosthetic arm in under a day?"

Ichigo looked like he'd been hit over the head. "I should _not_ have needed you to tell me that."

Uryuu began to speak-

"Call me stupid and I won't tell you how everyone else is 'till tomorrow."

Unspoken was the promise that he would visit tomorrow, and would continue to do so until Uryuu was released or, ah, "misplaced". Whichever came first. Uryuu actually felt rather sorry for the current heads of the Gotei 13 if the latter came first. Kurosaki would obliterate everything in his way, not out of any real malice, but simply due to an excess of power and a lack of control.

Uryuu smirked slightly.

"You're imagining someone in pain, aren't you?"

Uryuu nodded. His newfound bloodthirsty streak was disturbing at times, but it did help fill the hours.

"'Newfound', like hell. You're a scary bastard sometimes."

"Shut it. And the rest?"

"The rest? Oh, everyone else. Inoue's… mostly okay. She's still kind of depressed about everyone she couldn't save, but that's just 'cause she's Inoue and she cares about everyone, even the ones that don't really deserve it. Physically, she's fine."

_And mentally?_ Uryuu didn't ask, though. Kurosaki wouldn't stop tearing himself up over the damage done to Inoue-san for a long time, certainly no sooner than Uryuu did.

"Tatsuki's doing all right. She still isn't speaking to me, except when Inoue's around, but I know she isn't really mad at me."

"How can you tell?"

"Karate." Kurosaki grimaced. "I need to relearn how to use my human body without screwing it up. Urahara's offered to lend me a gigai, but it's Urahara, so…"

Uryuu pulled a face.

"Yeah. I've been sparring with Tatsuki to get my coordination and everything back, and..."

"She won?" It wasn't really a question. Kurosaki's spiritual body was more powerful and better-trained than ever, but his physical body had been inhabited by a lazy mod soul for most of the year. These days, when Kurosaki went home, his first priority was to check on his family and friends, and his second priority was re-training. Uryuu didn't bother asking about school.

"Kicked my ass. She literally couldn't use one hand 'cause she sprained her pinky-"

"What?"

"Something to do with Honshou, I don't know. Anyway, she kicked my ass one-handed. Then she kicked me in the, uh..."

Uryuu choked slightly. "She kicked you in the groin?"

"Thank you _so much _for saying it out loud. Yeah. She'll stop giving me the cold shoulder pretty soon, I guess. Tatsuki's not really much for holding grudges."

"True." He would not laugh, he would not laugh, he was not going to laugh.

Kurosaki glared.

Uryuu coughed into his hand. "And your family?"

The room went silent.

Uryuu was suddenly aware of its emptiness, of how blasted small it was – four tatami mats, a luxury suite as far as jail cells go but no less a prison. He hated this room, with its television spouting shinigami propaganda day in and day out and no off switch. He hated the power-suppressing cuffs he was forced to wear at all times, muffling his senses to the point that anything short of Kurosaki's poorly-controlled torrent of spiritual pressure doesn't even register to the senses he's spent most of his life training. He hated the cheap fluorescent light on the ceiling, the way it washed out all color and left him with skin as white as that damned uniform.

He will go mad with clipped wings, in this cell with no sky.

"I know, Uryuu. Believe me, I know-"

"_How could you know?_" Uryuu almost screamed. He knew the guards would come in to restrain him but he didn't _care_. "Have you ever been _really_ trapped? Out of choices? Out of options? Of course not, because every time you get backed into a corner or nearly die or actually die, your insane luck comes through and you get a new power or your Hollow kills your enemies for you or Inoue-san-"

_-brings you back to life,_ he almost says, but Uryuu is not so far gone in his anger to forget that he is always being watched, and he will not be the one who lets Gotei 13 know just how valuable a pawn she could be. He suddenly hates that he can think that way, that he can watch dispassionately from within his own mind and choose what secrets to let slip in front of his not-so-secret observers from the Onmitsukido, that he-

"-_prays for you_, so shut up! Get out!"

Kurosaki did not yell back. He stood. "Later, Ishida."

As though it had not happened.

Kurosaki did not loom, even now when he must surely be furious with Uryuu for all but spitting in his face when he's risking his place, any place, in the afterlife for one errant Quincy.

"Sorry."

"Why can't you just _leave_ me and save yourself?" Uryuu wished he had not said that out loud.

Kurosaki looked like he'd been hit over the head. "…You're repeating yourself."

He watched Kurosaki leave. The door slid shut behind him, quietly.

He turned back to the table. The tea spilled. There was a puddle on the table, a growing stain on the floor, and a tiny brown spot on his pure white robe.

Uryuu sank his head into his hands and laughed.

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><p>Further Notes: Repeat after me, "Unreliable Narrator". Ichigo knows about the eavesdroppers and he's learned better than to trust people *cough*Kyouraku*cough* just because he personally likes them. Also, Uryuu is really messed up in the head. I left a lot of details fuzzy or even contradictory to what's been established in canon (i.e. Orihime's power can regenerate lost limbs) on purpose. Yes, Ichigo supposedly killed Juhabach here – again, unreliable narrator. He's the canon protagonist, and it wouldn't be the first time he's neutralized a godlike being (even if the last time his ultimate final desperation move only worked because the Hougyoku stopped powering Aizen up).<p>

As for what really happened?

*shrug* Figure it out.

Read and review, please!


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